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Covert Operations: The Human Factor
Maj. Gen. Avraham Tamir, who was a ranking official at the Israeli defense ministry at the time, told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh last year: “Every month we gave a list of American weapons and American spare parts we’d like to sell to Iran.” Tamir said that the lists were handed to the U.S. ambassador to Israel at the time, Samuel Lewis.8 Following the appearance of Hersh’s report in the New York Times, Secretary of State James Baker acknowledged that the newly-installed Reagan administration (in which he served as White House chief of staff) “might very well” have approved the arms sales.9 U.S. and Israeli officials interviewed by Hersh gave divergent answers, ranging from six to 18 months—about the duration of the Haig-Begin agreement. While the agreement was in effect, wrote Hersh, quoting former Israeli officials, some of the arms shipments were flown out of Marana Air Park near Tucson. The CIA has long used Marana as a covert air base. According to Pakistani officials and a former Israeli intelligence operative, Israeli operatives and the CIA moved massive quantities of weapons to Iran through Pakistan.10 In an affidavit filed in a 1988 Texas lawsuit, Will Northrop, who claims to have served as a counterespionage specialist with the rank of colonel in Israeli military intelligence, says that in 1981 the CIA launched an operation called “VE/GOLF,” which involved shipping arms to Iran through brokers in Israel and elsewhere. In 1983, Northrop says in his affidavit, the Reagan administration set up a second arms channel, “CONDOR/DEMAVAND,” to market arms from NATO stores and supply spare parts directly from U.S. manufacturers.11 Even after the Haig-Begin pact was terminated and Washington instituted an aggressive anti-smuggling program, the U.S. simply observed Israeli shipments to Iran and replenished Israel’s stock of the U.S. weapons it was selling. Reports detailing the Israeli sales—they came “literally daily,” according to a former high-ranking intelligence official in the Reagan administration—were routinely circulated to senior administration officials.12 In March 1982, James L. Buckley, the under secretary of state for security assistance, science and technology, wrote to Sen. Charles Percy (R-IL), then chair of the Senate foreign relations committee:
In the Texas lawsuit, two men who worked as contract agents for the U.S. Customs Service are seeking reimbursement for their expenses because, they claim, they could not get the service to prosecute Ian Smalley, one of Israel’s major arms dealers in the early Reagan years. The contract agents claim they were told by Customs officials “that if the Israelis were [found] to be in the picture, the entire [Smalley] investigation would be stopped by the State Department.” In 1983, when the two persuaded the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to take action against Smalley, they say a customs agent showed one of them a CIA message saying “the Israeli government had informed Smalley that they would kill the U.S. Attorney, Gary Howard and Ron Tucker [the two control agents] to prevent Smalley from going to trial.” When Smalley was ultimately tried, he was acquitted, because Gary Howard claimed, the Justice Department pulled its punches.14 The Reagan administration also chose not to prosecute two U.S. Army colonels who sold arms to Iran from their U.S. embassy posts in London and Paris beginning in 1983. One of the colonels was partners with Paul Cutter (a.k.a. Sjeklocha), a U.S. arms dealer with close links to Israel, who was convicted in 1985 of trying to smuggle TOW missiles to Iran.15 Writing in the New York Times, Seymour Hersh noted the estimate of Henrik Berlau, the president of the Danish Seamen’s Union, that, by the end of 1985 (when the Iran-contra affair began), Danish ships manned by his members had carried 600 cargoes of U.S.-made arms from Eilat in Israel to Bandar Abas, Iran.16 The union has gone public about the arms sales, Berlau said in a telephone interview from his Copenhagen office, because it wants to pressure the Danish government to outlaw “black” and “gray” arms shipments. These are dangerous, he explained, because the recipient’s enemy may decide to retaliate against the crew.17 The value of the weapons shipped is beyond estimation. (One “small” contract Israel closed with Iran in July 1981 was worth $200 million, according to former Israeli military intelligence officer Shmuel Segev.18)
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